Dual boot with xp problems

[thesalesman]

Situation: partitioned with easus in XP to free up 17gb of space on C: drive.
Installed Windows 7. Win 7 on C: drive, d: drive (old partiction was c
Restarted. Would NOT boot XP (missing Hal.dll).

After reinstall (made a mistake of making the new C:drive ACTIVE) of the C: drive (small partition with Win 7), could still not dual boot.

Used Easy BCD. Now when selecting XP, says "load needed DLL's for Kernal" error.

Question: How to fix it so I maintain Win 7/ Win XP dual boot. (While in XP was able to xffer crit my docs folder, etc.) to ext drive. Just in case.

 

[daship]

You got to install 7 1st then XP.

 

[thesalesman]

You got to install 7 1st then XP.

Nuts. Unless you got a time machine. Somehow, I know its possible to undo the damage. Somehow.

Thinking making a custom bootldr with easybcd would help. I have most of my bookmarks in firfox so I would love to port them over. However, I still need XP.

Also, minor issue of bloody ati AGP 2400 HD video card not working. Uninstalled the ATI (or so I think.) Not bsod much now.

 

[Zoron]

No, you cannot install Win 7 first, then XP... as XP's bootloader will overwrite 7's and make 7 unbootable. You ALWAYS install the oldest Windows first, then work your way up to the newest. The best way to accomplish what you're doing is to use two separate hard drives. By the way... 17GB? That partition is way too small to be useful for either Windows 7 or XP. (If you installed Windows 7 on that partition, I'm surprised it didn't tell you the partition was too small).

Once you had the partition created... did you reboot back into XP to ensure that your XP was still working before installing Win 7? You should be able to boot back into XP by doing a repair via the XP CD. Once that is accomplished, you're much better off getting another hard drive for Windows 7... 17GB is too little space.

 

[thesalesman]

17 gb required doesn't mean it needs it all after install. I have 10 gigs free after.

Tried using all available options in Easy BCD 2.0.

It looks so far that I would have to manually do a bit of editing the boot.ini files. Bah. ATI Agp card is only stable it appears in lower res or safe mode. But getting into XP is priority right now.

Thanks for the replies. Anyone else have any ideas.

 

[Zoron]

Editing the boot.ini isn't going to do you any good... you HAVE to do a REPAIR of Windows XP if you expect to boot into it. Messing around with the boot.ini isn't going to magically restore the missing files XP needs to boot.

 

[thesalesman]

After editing the boot ini, restarting, and choosing XP, it says i need to reinstall a copy of hal.dll. (hardware interface dll as I looked it up.) Don't see it yet in my RECOVERY partition from when I had a working XP.

Thus, next issue, how do I get to the recovery partition to start the setup process when the closest I can come is using the Win 7 install dvd (beta download, not rtm)?

I hope I could in a Repair of the XP partition/install without destoying my apps like Office 2007 and Office 2010 tech preview and so on.

 

[Zoron]

That's what the repair option is for... it refreshes all of your system files while leaving your data and applications intact.

 

[thesalesman]

Ok. Back after I tried using the Recovery CD that came with (made ) the PC. Sadly, it did not work. In addition, it did something to mess up the bootmgr as it couldn't find it on restart.

Had to reinstall Win 7. In addition, after reinstall, could not find the Recovery partition anymore. 3.2gb gone. Where, dunno.

I will try to use easybcd once more on this new clean Win 7. In no go, will have to just copy the 40 gb from the old win partition (minus the Windows folder of course) to my ext drive. Resize the Win 7 partition to the rest of the drive, clean up (defrag) and reinstall Office 2007, Office 2010 TP and some games. (Wisely, I have WoW already on the ext drive and works fine.)

Next problem is getting stable vid drivers for Win 7. (Any suggesstions peeps?)
AMD 1.6 ghz
1 gig mem
Ati Agp 512 Radeon 2400 HD

With any luck, I might have it all working nicely by end of the week. HA!

 

[buzznut]

I agree with the suggestion that your drive is too small. So you have 10Gb free after install. then windows grabs a couple more for swap file. Windows doesn't like having less than 10 gigs available, it won't play nice.

There's no way in heck I would dual boot on a drive that small. I'm not sure what you're trying to do, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

 

[thesalesman]

Well, obviously, was trying to try out Win 7 again. And still use XP. Well, the gig is up now that it is fubar. The ATI Agp Radeon 2400 HD with 512 mb ram not so nice except with Aero turned off it appears. Kinda ugly.

Nonetheless. One last try with Easy BCD today then xfer my stuff to ext drive, resize partition to take up all the drive, reload my crap. Sigh. Shoulda just waited 3 months to buy a PC with it on it.

From what I see so far, Win 7 is going to be better. Loads faster, graphics seems better (from my playin WoW -- skywall, Deslok (Nelf) -- so far). Oh, and doing so on just 1 gig of ram.

Thanks for the replies. I'll let ya know how it turns out.

 

[PTree]

This it may be of some help. There is some detailed info on modifying the boot mgr.

http://www.sevenforums.com/installation-setup/9546-triple-boot-xp-vista-windows-7-a.html

 

[someoneZA]

Hi there

I dual boot XP and 7 just fine. I have XP on a 20GB system partition with hardly anything on it, while the rest of my 250GB (actually 232GB) is where all my games and apps go. Two days ago I decided I wanted to try 7 and installed on the Data partition. Mine works fine no problems whatsoever (although I did get a BSOD with ntfs.sys when 7 first installed while setting the time and date, account and cd key.) As it has been said before, ALWAYS older version of windows first. Maybe your problem was Easy BCD